Powerglide

I'd keep it stock, as Grog says, the drum brakes work fine, I'm adding a OEM booster just to reduce pedal pressure, and PS so I don't have to screw the wheel so much navigating city streets and parking. Some who live in the country actually remove PS because the ram system takes some of the feel out of it. The stock shocks are also just fine, overhaul the front end properly and the car will handle and ride perfectly well. One trick is to dial in a couple of degrees of negative caster, a half-degree more on the passenger side helps track down the road straight, esp on a 2LBT with a high crown.

Is that like Major Major in Catch 22? No matter. Is anyone interested enough in a plain Jane 1669 light restoration for me to post a couple of pics as we go along? 409/T-10 bubble tops are the bee's knees, no argument (see above - I think the Gurney lives in the UK now after its restoration), but I've long had a thing for a 4-door flat-top, and this one turned up after 2 years searching for a reasonable one. Its a 20-footer that I'm going to make into a 10-footer. I like the bench seat, the whole family fits in the front seat, leaving the rear seat free for half a dozen neighbourhood kids, or somewhere to put a couple of my buddies to sleep it off on the way home. The trunk is perfect for the family to sit in with your feet in the well when the picnic gets rained out (it does rain sometimes in AU). Can't do all that easily with a 2-door, can you, John? BTW, have a look at the '62 Beechey 409 via the url above, he found it and restored it and drives it around, street-legal and has had it back on the track, still blows away everything else from the same era. Nice of you to present your son with a real antique car - I'd have your Biscayne if it had more doors! Here are the floors, couple rust holes at each end of the front underfloor brace, that's all. Surface rust cleans up OK with oxalic acid, safe and mild compared with oven cleaner. Vinegar works, too, but not as well. It goes to the panel shop to get the holes fixed soon as we all get outa jail here. Incidentally, I read on some blog that x-frame cars had a pressing in the tranny hump where you cut it out for a 4-speed floor shift. Not true, at least for '61.

No turboglides sold new here, never saw one. BTW John348, here is a thread about the best known W block car in AU. This '62 409 is second in fame only to Gurney's '61, which also lived here most of its life <https://www.chevytalk.org/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/294397>

Melbourne Australia, not Melbourne FLA! More than 75 miles, I promise you. Well spotted, your are a true scholar of the works emanating from the late Louis Chevrolet! - it is a 283 170hp, so it is a no-option Bel Air, just a bare 1669. I am told that all 283s had iron PG until '63, all 327s had the alloy PG. I am amazed at how well designed and simple these cars were. AU GM cars were Holdens, some used a lot of Chevy parts, but they were different in design and assembly. The 2001-6 Pontiac GTO is actually a Holden Monaro, built in Adelaide, AU, running an LS1 and Tremec or 4L60E. The AU version offered a Buick 3800/4L60E option. The same car sold in the UK as a Vauxhall VXR8. There were also special (HSV) versions of the Monaro, one with a Corvette Callaway motor, today highly sought after, and another with the Corvette 427, rare and expensive. The simplicity of older Chevys makes them fairly easy to dismantle in part or in whole, and reassemble. The SBC motor is a work of automotive art - practical auto engineering at its best. I have had 7 cars with a SBC motor, most with a PG, and I am sold on the combo. I hope Robgrin got his Impala back on the road, and Impala61rag should find some info here, as AU Chevrolets of that period were all sourced from Canada CKD, and will be the same, except assembled here RHD with a Pontiac instrument cluster; the AU Pontiacs were also Canada-sourced and were therefore Pontiac bodies on a Chevrolet chassis and running gear, right up until about 1969, for an example, see <https://www.carsales.com.au/cars/details/1966-pontiac-parisienne-auto/SSE-AD-6696689/?Cr=1> To some, Zora Arkus-Duntov is considered a secular saint.

Padgett is absolutely correct. My car's VIN starts 11669B, from this you can tell it is a 1961 4-door sedan V8 Powerglide, assembled in Baltimore. Other numbers show it was built in April 1961. All the numbers, casting numbers, casting dates, engine stamps, even the carby tag, match. Nice There is no guarantee all this is correct, but the more corresponding data you have, the more certain you can be sure it is a "matching numbers" car. The diff code will be stamped on the rear axle housing, but I haven't got that far yet - it will be 3:08:1. This car lived all its life in WV until 2016 when it appeared in Adelaide, AU. It now resides in the fair city of Melbourne, in my garage, undergoing sympathetic restoration, hopefully to a B+ standard. It has zero options. A nasty made-in-China aftermarket radio went in the bin. No trunk light. One-speed wipers. Very basic, the way I like it. Why not drop in a 409, or at least a 348, you might ask: because it is only going to be original once: the cast iron PG runs fine and leaks next to nothing, and the 283 runs fast and smooth, clocked only 106k miles, oil nice and clean, barely run in, as a friend put it. Had one repaint some time ago, not very good, about 7/10, but I'm rubbing it back carefully now, and it is looking not bad. I had the original windscreen polished (all the glass is original), and I am now addressing the only significant rust at the ends of the front underbody brace, where mud accumulated over 55 WV winters. '61 4-door Chevys are becoming comparatively rare as many have been parted out to restore 2-door cars, and it was not a particularly high production year to start with. My twilight turquoise and ermine white beauty is getting power brakes and power steering to make navigating around the 'burbs a tad easier, but that's all, and in any case these don't appear on the tags. The nasty aftermarket wheels (also made in China) will be replaced with 14x5 originals and correct 1961 hub caps. Everything else works fine after 59 years, and not a micro chip anywhere. Where is a Hyundai or for that matter a BMW going to be in another 59 years?